Over the past several years, photosharing has become widely accepted by photo enthusiasts. Many websites currently exist that allow users to upload digital images to the site for storage on a server and for viewing by others over the Internet. Oftentimes, images are grouped to form an album web page so that the user can invite others to view the album web page, as opposed to each individual image. Photosharing websites also allow a shopper to purchase digital images stored in the server, as well as other products based on the digital images, such as greeting cards, coffee mugs, mouse pads, and T-shirts, on which a selected image is imprinted.
Photo importing is well-known in centrally hosted photosharing architectures. Importing is accomplished through a number of means. Images may be imported to a photosharing site using e-mail, web form posting, and custom application importing through proprietary protocols. These approaches work in a centrally hosted configuration because the photosharing server is always on, and the images can be stored directly into a destination album at time of import.
This approach to photosharing, however, presents some disadvantages. In particular, users are required to upload digital images to the site, which can be time consuming, and the site requires extensive storage capacity to store the images of all the users, which can become expensive.
To address these concerns, the assignee of the present invention has developed a web-based peer-to-peer photosharing system in which all workstations and computers (peers) in the network store images locally and act as servers to other users on the network. A central site accessible by all the peers provides additional functionality, such as coordinating the peers, providing search capabilities for the peers, purchase order fulfillment, etc.
Each peer computer includes a peer application, which when executed, enables the peer computer to communicate with other peers and with a server at the central site via a network, such as the Internet. The peer application also allows the user to perform operations locally, such as browsing thumbnail images and creating greeting cards with selected images.
Conventional importing of images in P2P photosharing systems is normally accomplished only locally, i.e., there must be physical access to a computer running the peer software to import the images. Some attempts have been made to mitigate this problem however. OurPictures of Palo, Alto, Calif., for example, offers a P2P digital photo service that allows a user to choose buddies to which their images can be replicated. This means that if peer A lists Peers B & C as replication destinations, then the images specified by peer A will be transferred to peers B & C. The approach, however, lacks the ability to allow the user of peer A to import images into peer A from a remote computer. This method also does not make allowances for importing images into a peer by other registered users of the service who are not listed in the peer owner's group of buddies. This method further dictates that any user who wants to import images into peer A must be a registered user of the system and the images imported into peer A must be imported from another peer computer (e.g., Peer B or C).
Accordingly, there is need for a method and system for allowing distributed importing of guest images in a peer-based photosharing network. The method and system should allow a peer owner to remotely import images to their peer from any computer regardless of whether the computer is also a member of the peer network. The present invention addresses such a need.